What I ate: Fancy Adult Mac & Cheese

Jack and I first became obsessed with this dish when we had it at Mix Fresh Kitchen last year. Within a week of ordering it we were at home trying to replicate it's deliciousness. If you've tried to replicate menu items before, you'll know that it can get pretty tough to do without a wordy dish description. Lucky for us, at Mix, they are very wordy. A quick glance at the menu and we knew what key ingredients were - aged Cheddar, smoked bacon, pasta (obviously) and basil bread crumbs.  

Once the key ingredients were identified we googled a few basic homemade mac and cheese recipe to mix, match and fill in the blanks. 

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups macaroni
1 1/2 cups grated aged cheddar
5 slices bacon
2 cloves garlic
1 cup skim milk
1/2 cup cream
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons fresh basil

Begin by placing the bacon on a cooking sheet, and baking for 15 - 20 minutes at 400 degrees F - or until the bacon is crispy. Remove from oven and transfer to paper towel to soak up the grease. Once cool enough, crumble the bacon and set aside.

Grind bread into breadcrumbs (or just buy breadcrumbs) and mix with ground basil. Set aside.

Might as well go ahead and cook the noodles now to. Once those are done, put them aside - but keep an eye on them so they don't clump together and get mungy, oil or butter can usually combat this.

Next, get on the sauce. For this you will need 4 hands. Got 'em? Good.

Chop up the garlic. Heat the milk and garlic in a small saucepan, making sure they don't boil. 
Once heated, pour milk through a sieve and discard garlic.

In a medium pot, melt the butter and then mix in the flour. Cook over low while stirring for 2 minutes. 
Once you've created a paste, add the hot garlic milk, continue to milk and cook for another 2 minutes, allowing the sauce to thicken. 

Off the heat, add the aged cheddar, salt, pepper and nutmeg. 

Final stages. Choose a pan, pour the prepared noodles into it. Next, realize you wanted a smaller baking dish and transfer the macaroni from your rejected pan to a smaller, younger, better one. It's cool though. You love washing dishes so unnecessarily dirtying them pays off in the end.

Once the pasta is in the right dish mix in the bacon. Then pour the cheesy goodness over it all. No worries if your cheese didn't melt completely, dump the cheese clumps right on top and then mix and distribute the pasta to cover the dish. Finish by tossing breadcrumbs in a layer on top of the pasta. If you're full-time fancy, rest some little basil leaves on top of it all so the whole world can see.

Baked for 35 - 40 minutes.
Let sit for 10 minutes upon removing from stove.

Accidentally polish off at least a quarter of the entire dish in one sitting.
Then spend the rest of the night sneaking off to the kitchen for extra bites.

Notes:

I may even use 3 cups of macaroni next time to stretch

the deliciousness of the dish.

Enjoy. This is the perfect staple during the winter... 
unless of course you don't want to gain 40 lbs by spring.
If that's the case, stick to making it once or twice a month, rather than every day.




pssst.
Have you checked out this super awesome, super vintage
Shabby Apple giveaway?